A couple of days ago I discovered a connection between the Ellwood and Rushton families.

A message on the Rootschat Message Board told of the children of Michael Ellwood (1770-1853) and his wife Mary Atkinson (1771-1872).

Most of their children died young, except for two – Mark Ellwood (1807-1849) who married Jane Powley and lived in London. Their son Mark Ellwood went to Canada.

Another surviving child of Michael and Mary was Anne Ellwood (b. 1801 in Appleby, Westmorland) who married Thomas Rushton (1805-1850) in Appleby in 1826. Thomas was the son of Mark Rushton (1772-1851) and Mary Yarker (1772-1836).

That reminded me that I had been at school with a Mark Rushton, though we have lost contact since leaving school. One of the interesting things about this, however, is that seems that this Mark Rushton and Mary Yarker may well have been his ancestors.

Thomas Rushton and Anne Ellwood had at least seven children, most of whom died young. But two survived: Ellwood Rushton and Yarker Rushton.

You’d think that with names like that they would be easy to find in the various online indexes, but not a bit of it. The trouble is, I think, that
the transcribers and compilers of online indexes could not believe that anyone could have a name like Yarker, so they wrote Yorker, Garker, Yasser, Yanker and various other things.

I thought of my old schoolfellow and thought “what if I search for his full name?” Perhaps he’s become interested in family history and has it all sorted. So I typed “Mark Morland Rushton” as a search argument and there was a fairly full family tree. It wasn’t his, but it did have someone who could well have been his grandfather. It’s the Marking Time web site.

I followed up some of those, and managed to find a few more children and grandchildren, some full names and the names of some spouses.

This branch are among the descendants of Mark Ellwood (born in Dufton in 1734) and married Ann Loadman of Brough under Stainmore.

Another of the children of Michael Ellwood (1770-1853) and his wife Mary Atkinson (1771-1872) who left descendants was Mary Ellwood who married John Dufton. The family moved to Birkenhead and later to Liverpool.

If anyone is interested in this part of the Ellwood family, please let us know, and join the Ellwood Family Forum.